Lunch at the Taiwan Café

I went down to Boston to pick up my daughter for the weekend. I've been telling her to go to the Taiwan Café since you Bostonians started posting, but she was skeptical, and went to PFChang's for her anniversary, and to local pan-asian takeouts for regular meals.

We didn't have to wait too long, and they seated us at one of the few two-tops, probably because we were the only white people there. I didn't order anything weird, as she was looking for comfort food (which, to her, is not eggplant, alas). She ordered taiwanese wonton soup, I ordered mini steamed buns with pork and crabmeat (the waitress said there was a 15 minute wait on these). We also ordered crispy fried oysters and Taiwanese style stirfry noodles with pork and vegetables.

First the waitress brought the soup. It was a giant bowl of handmade wontons (lots of filling) and fresh spinach leaves, with small pieces of meat (chicken? duck?). It was large enough to serve 3 people as an appetizer.

Before we had finished this, the oysters came, with a small bowl of seasoned salt. The oysters wer good, but they would have been better with a tangy sauce to dip them in.

Next came the noodles, at which point I realized that I had forgotten to specify that I wanted rice cakes. Oh, well. They were tasty, but I didn't detect any pork meat in the dish.

Finally the dumplings came, and they were well worth the wait. We had a very large steamer basket of dumplings (I'd hate to see what they consider to be normal or "maxi"-style dumplings) full of pork, yellow-colored crabmeat and juice.

We managed to eat the dumplings and the soup, but had to take home much of the noodles and oysters.

It was a challenge getting water from the waitress.

The whole check came to $27 and change.

She's going to bring her boyfriend there from now on. Two bowls of wonton soup and an order of dumplings will cost them less than $15, and they'll be stuffed.